[23] In a great picture, now ruined, at the abandoned Bavarian palace of Schleissheim, near Munich, Tintoret has represented the Crucifixion in its later aspect.
Such, told briefly and inadequately,--for language can only hint at the effects of painting,--is this solemn event as conceived by Tintoret’s imagination.[24]
[24] This is one of the four or five paintings which Tintoret signed. It was finished in 1565. His receipt for its payment still exists. It is dated March 9, 1566. The sum received was two hundred and fifty ducats.
We have no evidence that Tintoret visited Rome, nor any record of his journeys, except that to Mantua, yet we may be sure that he was familiar with the scenery of the mainland. The woods and foliage, the streams, valleys, and meadows, the little hills and picturesque mountains, which abound in his paintings, he did not see at Venice. Our lack of information leaves us in doubt, therefore, whether he studied Michael Angelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sixtine Chapel. If he never went to Rome, he probably was acquainted, from engravings or copies, with the composition of that extraordinary work; yet his own painting of that subject bears so little resemblance to Michael Angelo’s that it seems to have been produced independently.
The masterpiece of the Sixtine Chapel is so complicated that it bewilders the student, until he observes that the principal groups are roughly arranged in an immense irregular horseshoe, the points of which are near the bottom of the lower wall, while Christ, the chief figure, is inclosed in the upper oval. Four fifths of the action takes place in the air, the lower portion alone of the fresco being occupied by the river Styx and its adjacent bank. In its present nearly ruined condition we cannot guess the original effect of this work; but I doubt whether it could ever have satisfied the beholder’s instinctive demand for harmony. The groups, even the individuals, seem isolated, not only in space but in spirit. There is not, nor could there be, a single prevailing passion. The only characteristic which applies to the whole work is tremendous energy. Whatever of agony, of fury, of stubbornness, of determination, can be expressed by the human body, is expressed here. There is no muscle or tendon which is not exhibited in various positions; no posture of limbs or trunk which is not represented. The resurrection of the _body_ is illustrated in a hundred ways, and the expression of the faces is of secondary importance. Here, patriarchs have the vigor of Titans; saints are as robust as athletes; Christ himself might be a majestically stern Apollo. Not without reason may we call these effigies of restless, writhing human beings wonderful diagrams of anatomy and concrete illustrations of dynamics. Even the saved, who occupy the higher regions, are not tranquil. In striving to comprehend these whirlwinds of action, the mind is wearied and baffled. Unit by unit you examine this multitude, and you are amazed in turn by sublimity, or horror, or power.